NPR Story

11:21 am

Wed June 25, 2014

Neil Gaiman Brings A Multimedia Extravaganza To Carnegie Hall

Neil Gaiman's latest book is "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains." He's pictured here on March 9, 2013. (Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)

Neil Gaiman has won a wide following with novels like “American Gods,” “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” and “Coraline,” and he’s read his works aloud numerous times.

But this Friday, at Carnegie Hall, he’s going multimedia: he’ll be performing his latest work, “The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains,” (excerpt below) with a musical score provided by the FourPlay String Quartet, and illustrations by artist Eddie Campbell projected behind him. The work was commissioned by the Sydney Opera House as part of its Graphic Festival.

Neil Gaiman and Eddie Campbell’s work has also been published in book form, but as Gaiman told Here & Now’s Robin Young, the multimedia performance gives audiences the opportunity “to experience the same thing in very different ways with different parts of ourselves.”

“Human beings do not relate to written words in the same way that they will relate to spoken words, they do not relate to music in the same way do to pictures,” Gaiman said. “It’s all different parts of our head, different parts of our minds processing this. And then, when you put them all together, suddenly it’s as if you’re being given permission to make a movie in your head.”